Buddhism And Medicine In Japan

Download Buddhism And Medicine In Japan full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Buddhism And Medicine In Japan ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Buddhism and Medicine in Japan

Author : Katja Triplett
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 311057621X
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (15 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Buddhism and Medicine in Japan by : Katja Triplett

Download or read book Buddhism and Medicine in Japan written by Katja Triplett and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-11-18 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates the close link between medicine and Buddhism in early and medieval Japan. It may seem difficult to think of Japanese Buddhism as being linked to the realm of medical practices since religious healing is usually thought to be restricted to prayers for divine intervention. There is a surprising lack of scholarship regarding medicinal practices in Japanese Buddhism although an overwhelming amount of primary sources proves otherwise. A careful re-reading of well-known materials from a study-of-religions perspective, together with in some cases a first-time exploration of manuscripts and prints, opens new views on an understudied field. The book presents a topical survey and comprises chapters on treating sight-related diseases, women’s health, plant-based materica medica and medicinal gardens, and finally horse medicine to include veterinary knowledge. Terminological problems faced in working on this material – such as ‘religious’ or ‘magical healing’ as opposed to ‘secular medicine’ – are assessed. The book suggests focusing more on the plural nature of the Japanese healing system as encountered in the primary sources and reconsidering the use of categories from the European intellectual tradition.

Buddhism and Medicine

Author : C. Pierce Salguero
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 023154426X
Total Pages : 541 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Buddhism and Medicine by : C. Pierce Salguero

Download or read book Buddhism and Medicine written by C. Pierce Salguero and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its earliest days, Buddhism has been closely intertwined with medicine. Buddhism and Medicine is a singular collection showcasing the generative relationship and mutual influence between these fields across premodern Asia. The anthology combines dozens of English-language translations of premodern Buddhist texts with contextualizing introductions by leading international scholars in Buddhist studies, the history of medicine, and a range of other fields. These sources explore in detail medical topics ranging from the development of fetal anatomy in the womb to nursing, hospice, dietary regimen, magical powers, visualization, and other healing knowledge. Works translated here include meditation guides, popular narratives, ritual manuals, spells texts, monastic disciplinary codes, recipe inscriptions, philosophical treatises, poetry, works by physicians, and other genres. All together, these selections and their introductions provide a comprehensive overview of Buddhist healing throughout Asia. They also demonstrate the central place of healing in Buddhist practice and in the daily life of the premodern world. This anthology is a companion volume to Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Sources (Columbia, 2019).

Buddhist Healing in Medieval China and Japan

Author : C. Pierce Salguero
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824884221
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Buddhist Healing in Medieval China and Japan by : C. Pierce Salguero

Download or read book Buddhist Healing in Medieval China and Japan written by C. Pierce Salguero and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2020-08-31 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its inception in northeastern India in the first millennium BCE, the Buddhist tradition has advocated a range of ideas and practices that were said to ensure health and well-being. As the religion developed and spread to other parts of Asia, healing deities were added to its pantheon, monastic institutions became centers of medical learning, and healer-monks gained renown for their mastery of ritual and medicinal therapeutics. In China, imported Buddhist knowledge contended with a sophisticated, state-supported system of medicine that was able to retain its influence among the elite. Further afield in Japan, where Chinese Buddhism and Chinese medicine were introduced simultaneously as part of the country’s adoption of civilization from the “Middle Kingdom,” the two were reconciled by individuals who deemed them compatible. In East Asia, Buddhist healing would remain a site of intercultural tension and negotiation. While participating in transregional networks of circulation and exchange, Buddhist clerics practiced locally specific blends of Indian and indigenous therapies and occupied locally defined social positions as religious and medical specialists. In this diverse and compelling collection, an international group of scholars analyzes the historical connections between Buddhism and healing in medieval China and Japan. Contributors focus on the transnationally conveyed aspects of Buddhist healing traditions as they moved across geographic, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. Simultaneously, the chapters also investigate the local instantiations of these ideas and practices as they were reinvented, altered, and re-embedded in specific social and institutional contexts. Investigating the interplay between the macro and micro, the global and the local, this book demonstrates the richness of Buddhist healing as a way to explore the history of cross-cultural exchange.

Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan

Author : Andrew Edmond Goble
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824860179
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan by : Andrew Edmond Goble

Download or read book Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan written by Andrew Edmond Goble and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Confluences of Medicine is the first book-length exploration in English of issues of medicine and society in premodern Japan. This multifaceted study weaves a rich tapestry of Buddhist healing practices, Chinese medical knowledge, Asian pharmaceuticals, and Islamic formulas as it elucidates their appropriation and integration into medieval Japanese medicine. It expands the parameters of the study of medicine in East Asia, which to date has focused on the subject in individual countries, and introduces the dynamics of interaction and exchange that coursed through the East Asian macro-culture. The book explores these themes primarily through the two extant works of the Buddhist priest and clinical physician Kajiwara Shozen (1265–1337), who was active at the medical facility housed at Gokurakuji temple in Kamakura, the capital of Japan’s first warrior government. With access to large numbers of printed Song medical texts and a wide range of materia medica from as far away as the Middle East, Shozen was a beneficiary of the efflorescence of trade and exchange across the East China Sea that typifies this era. His break with the restrictions of Japanese medicine is revealed in Ton’isho (Book of the simple physician) and Man’apo (Myriad relief formulas). Both of these texts are landmarks: the former being the first work written in Japanese for a popular audience; the latter, the most extensive Japanese medical work prior to the seventeenth century. Confluences of Medicine brings to the fore the range of factors—networks of Buddhist priests, institutional support, availability of materials, relevance of overseas knowledge to local conditions of domestic strife, and serendipity—that influenced the Japanese acquisition of Chinese medical information. It offers the first substantive portrait of the impact of the Song printing revolution in medieval Japan and provides a rare glimpse of Chinese medicine as it was understood outside of China. It is further distinguished by its attention to materia medica and medicinal formulas and to the challenges of technical translation and technological transfer in the reception and incorporation of a new pharmaceutical regime.

Medicine Master Buddha: The Iconic Worship of Yakushi in Heian Japan

Author : Yui Suzuki
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004196013
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (41 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Medicine Master Buddha: The Iconic Worship of Yakushi in Heian Japan by : Yui Suzuki

Download or read book Medicine Master Buddha: The Iconic Worship of Yakushi in Heian Japan written by Yui Suzuki and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-12-23 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through analysis of sculptural representations of the Medicine Buddha (J: Yakushi Nyorai), this book offers a fresh perspective on the seminal role played by Saich? and the Tendai school in disseminating this devotional cult throughout Japan during the Heian period.

Buddhism and Medicine

Author : C. Pierce Salguero
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231548303
Total Pages : 666 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Buddhism and Medicine by : C. Pierce Salguero

Download or read book Buddhism and Medicine written by C. Pierce Salguero and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the centuries, Buddhist ideas have influenced medical thought and practice in complex and varied ways in diverse regions and cultures. A companion to Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources, this work presents a collection of modern and contemporary texts and conversations from across the Buddhist world dealing with the multifaceted relationship between Buddhism and medicine. Covering the early modern period to the present, this anthology focuses on the many ways Buddhism and medicine were shaped by the forces of colonialism, science, and globalization, as well as ruptures and reconciliations between tradition and modernity. Editor C. Pierce Salguero and an international collection of scholars highlight diversity and innovation in the encounters between Buddhist and medical thought. The chapters contain a wide range of sources presenting different perspectives rooted in distinct times and places, including translations of published and unpublished documents and transcripts of ethnographic interviews as well as accounts by missionaries and colonial authorities and materials from the contemporary United States and United Kingdom. Together, these varied sources illustrate the many intersections of Buddhism and medicine in the past and how this nexus continues to be crucial in today’s global context.

Medicine Master Buddha: The Iconic Worship of Yakushi in Heian Japan

Author : Yui Suzuki
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004229175
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Medicine Master Buddha: The Iconic Worship of Yakushi in Heian Japan by : Yui Suzuki

Download or read book Medicine Master Buddha: The Iconic Worship of Yakushi in Heian Japan written by Yui Suzuki and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-12-19 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This profusely illustrated volume illuminates the primacy of icons in disseminating the worship of the Medicine Master Buddha (J: Yakushi Nyorai) in Japan. Suzuki’s meticulous study explicates how the devotional cult of Yakushi, one of the earliest Buddhist cults imported to Japan from the continent, interacted and blended with local beliefs, religious dispositions, and ritual practices over the centuries, developing its own distinctive imprint on Japanese soil. Worship of the Medicine Master Buddha became most influential during the Heian period (794–1185), when Yakushi’s popularity spread to different levels of society and locales outside the capital. The large number of Heian-period Yakushi statues found all across Japan demonstrates that Yakushi worship was an integral component of Heian religious practice. Medicine Master Buddha focuses on the ninth-century Tendai master Saichō (767–822) and his personal reverence for a standing Yakushi icon. The author proposes that, after Saichō’s death, the Tendai school played a critical role in popularizing the cult of this particular icon as a way of memorializing its founding master and strengthening its position as a major school of Japanese Buddhism. This publication offers a fresh perspective on sculptural representations of the Medicine Master Buddha (including the famous Jingoji Yakushi), and in so doing, reconsiders Yakushi worship as foundational to Heian religious and artistic culture.

Buddhist Healing in Medieval China and Japan

Author : C. Pierce Salguero
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824881214
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Buddhist Healing in Medieval China and Japan by : C. Pierce Salguero

A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine

Author : C. Pierce Salguero
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231546076
Total Pages : 406 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine by : C. Pierce Salguero

Download or read book A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine written by C. Pierce Salguero and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medicine, health, and healing have been central to Buddhism since its origins. Long before the global popularity of mindfulness and meditation, Buddhism provided cultures around the world with conceptual tools to understand illness as well as a range of therapies and interventions for care of the sick. Today, Buddhist traditions, healers, and institutions continue to exert a tangible influence on medical care in societies both inside and outside Asia, including in the areas of mental health, biomedicine, and even in responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the global history of the relationship between Buddhism and medicine remains largely untold. This book is a wide-ranging and accessible account of the interplay between Buddhism and medicine over the past two and a half millennia. C. Pierce Salguero traces the intertwining threads linking ideas, practices, and texts from many different times and places. He shows that Buddhism has played a crucial role in cross-cultural medical exchange globally and that Buddhist knowledge formed the nucleus for many types of traditional practices that still thrive today throughout Asia. Although Buddhist medicine has always been embedded in local contexts and differs markedly across cultures, Salguero identifies key patterns that have persisted throughout this long history. This book will be informative and invaluable for scholars, students, and practitioners of both Buddhism and complementary and alternative medicine.

Buddhism and Modernity

Author : Orion Klautau
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824884582
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Buddhism and Modernity by : Orion Klautau

Download or read book Buddhism and Modernity written by Orion Klautau and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2021-03-31 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan was the first Asian nation to face the full impact of modernity. Like the rest of Japanese society, Buddhist institutions, individuals, and thought were drawn into the dynamics of confronting the modern age. Japanese Buddhism had to face multiple challenges, but it also contributed to modern Japanese society in numerous ways. Buddhism and Modernity: Sources from Nineteenth-Century Japan makes accessible the voices of Japanese Buddhists during the early phase of high modernity. The volume offers original translations of key texts—many available for the first time in English—by central actors in Japan’s transition to the modern era, including the works of Inoue Enryō, Gesshō, Hara Tanzan, Shimaji Mokurai, Kiyozawa Manshi, Murakami Senshō, Tanaka Chigaku, and Shaku Sōen. All of these writers are well recognized by Buddhist studies scholars and Japanese historians but have drawn little attention elsewhere; this stands in marked contrast to the reception of Japanese Buddhism since D. T. Suzuki, the towering figure of Japanese Zen in the first half of the twentieth century. The present book fills the chronological gap between the premodern era and the twentieth century by focusing on the crucial transition period of the nineteenth century. Issues central to the interaction of Japanese Buddhism with modernity inform the five major parts of the work: sectarian reform, the nation, science and philosophy, social reform, and Japan and Asia. Throughout the chapters, the globally entangled dimension—both in relation to the West, especially the direct and indirect impact of Christianity, and to Buddhist Asia—is of great importance. The Introduction emphasizes not only how Japanese Buddhism was part of a broader, globally shared reaction of religions to the specific challenges of modernity, but also goes into great detail in laying out the specifics of the Japanese case.

Liquid Life

Author : William R. LaFleur
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691029652
Total Pages : 275 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Liquid Life by : William R. LaFleur

Download or read book Liquid Life written by William R. LaFleur and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why would a country strongly influenced by Buddhism's reverence for life allow legalized, widely used abortion? Equally puzzling to many Westerners is the Japanese practice of mizuko rites, in which the parents of aborted fetuses pray for the well-being of these rejected "lives." In this provocative investigation, William LaFleur examines abortion as a window on the culture and ethics of Japan. At the same time he contributes to the Western debate on abortion, exploring how the Japanese resolve their conflicting emotions privately and avoid the pro-life/pro-choice politics that sharply divide Americans on the issue.

Science, Technology, and Medicine in the Modern Japanese Empire

Author : David G. Wittner
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317444361
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Science, Technology, and Medicine in the Modern Japanese Empire by : David G. Wittner

Download or read book Science, Technology, and Medicine in the Modern Japanese Empire written by David G. Wittner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science, technology, and medicine all contributed to the emerging modern Japanese empire and conditioned key elements of post-war development. As the only emerging non-Western country that was a colonial power in its own right, Japan utilized these fields not only to define itself as racially different from other Asian countries and thus justify its imperialist activities, but also to position itself within the civilized and enlightened world with the advantages of modern science, technologies, and medicine. This book explores the ways in which scientists, engineers and physicians worked directly and indirectly to support the creation of a new Japanese empire, focussing on the eve of World War I and linking their efforts to later post-war developments. By claiming status as a modern, internationally-engaged country, the Japanese government was faced with having to control pathogens that might otherwise not have threatened the nation. Through the use of traditional and innovative techniques, this volume shows how the government was able to fulfil the state’s responsibility to protect society to varying degrees. Chapter 14 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

眞言密教圖印集

Author : Lokesh Chandra
Publisher : Vedams eBooks (P) Ltd
ISBN 13 : 9788179360002
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (6 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis 眞言密教圖印集 by : Lokesh Chandra

Download or read book 眞言密教圖印集 written by Lokesh Chandra and published by Vedams eBooks (P) Ltd. This book was released on 2001 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is the first comprehensive and illustrated treasury of esoteric mudras in the English language. Mudras in Japan by Lokesh Chandra and his late wife Sharada Rani is a collection of symbolic hand postures used in the rituals of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism of the Shingon denomination. The mudras have been an integral part of Buddhist iconography as well as of ritual. In Tantric rituals, the recitation of a mantra was accompanied by a mudra, and a ritual action. In the Mahavairocana-sutra, mudras are vital constituents of worship and meditation. Japan has the earliest manuscript of the mudras. The most ancient scroll is from the pen of Subhakarasimha of Nalanda, who lived from 637 to 735. The copy at the Onjoji monastery is dated 855. Another manuscript dated 864 has Mudras of the Susiddhi-tantra.

Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan

Author : Andrew Edmund Goble
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780824870317
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (73 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan by : Andrew Edmund Goble

Download or read book Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan written by Andrew Edmund Goble and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Confluences of Medicine is the first book-length exploration in English of issues of medicine and society in premodern Japan. This multifaceted study weaves a rich tapestry of Buddhist healing practices, Chinese medical knowledge, Asian pharmaceuticals, and Islamic formulas as it elucidates their appropriation and integration into medieval Japanese medicine. It expands the parameters of the study of medicine in East Asia, which to date has focused on the subject in individual countries, and introduces the dynamics of interaction and exchange that coursed through the East Asian macro-culture.The book explores these themes primarily through the two extant works of the Buddhist priest and clinical physician Kajiwara Shozen (1265–1337), who was active at the medical facility housed at Gokurakuji temple in Kamakura, the capital of Japan’s first warrior government. With access to large numbers of printed Song medical texts and a wide range of materia medica from as far away as the Middle East, Shozen was a beneficiary of the efflorescence of trade and exchange across the East China Sea that typifies this era. His break with the restrictions of Japanese medicine is revealed in Ton’isho (Book of the simple physician) and Man’apo (Myriad relief formulas). Both of these texts are landmarks: the former being the first work written in Japanese for a popular audience; the latter, the most extensive Japanese medical work prior to the seventeenth century.Confluences of Medicine brings to the fore the range of factors—networks of Buddhist priests, institutional support, availability of materials, relevance of overseas knowledge to local conditions of domestic strife, and serendipity—that influenced the Japanese acquisition of Chinese medical information. It offers the first substantive portrait of the impact of the Song printing revolution in medieval Japan and provides a rare glimpse of Chinese medicine as it was understood outside of China. It is further distinguished by its attention to materia medica and medicinal formulas and to the challenges of technical translation and technological transfer in the reception and incorporation of a new pharmaceutical regime.

Bringing Zen Home

Author : Paula Arai
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824860136
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Bringing Zen Home by : Paula Arai

Download or read book Bringing Zen Home written by Paula Arai and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Healing lies at the heart of Zen in the home, as Paula Arai discovered in her pioneering research on the ritual lives of Zen Buddhist laywomen. She reveals a vital stream of religious practice that flourishes outside the bounds of formal institutions through sacred rites that women develop and transmit to one another. Everyday objects and common materials are used in inventive ways. For example, polishing cloths, vivified by prayer and mantra recitation, become potent tools. The creation of beauty through the arts of tea ceremony, calligraphy, poetry, and flower arrangement become rites of healing. Bringing Zen Home brings a fresh perspective to Zen scholarship by uncovering a previously unrecognized but nonetheless vibrant strand of lay practice. The creativity of domestic Zen is evident in the ritual activities that women fashion, weaving tradition and innovation, to gain a sense of wholeness and balance in the midst of illness, loss, and anguish. Their rituals include chanting, ingesting elixirs and consecrated substances, and contemplative approaches that elevate cleaning, cooking, child-rearing, and caring for the sick and dying into spiritual disciplines. Creating beauty is central to domestic Zen and figures prominently in Arai’s analyses. She also discovers a novel application of the concept of Buddha nature as the women honor deceased loved ones as “personal Buddhas.” One of the hallmarks of the study is its longitudinal nature, spanning fourteen years of fieldwork. Arai developed a “second-person,” or relational, approach to ethnographic research prompted by recent trends in psychobiology. This allowed her to cultivate relationships of trust and mutual vulnerability over many years to inquire into not only the practices but also their ongoing and changing roles. The women in her study entrusted her with their life stories, personal reflections, and religious insights, yielding an ethnography rich in descriptive and narrative detail as well as nuanced explorations of the experiential dimensions and effects of rituals. In Bringing Zen Home, the first study of the ritual lives of Zen laywomen, Arai applies a cutting-edge ethnographic method to reveal a thriving domain of religious practice. Her work represents an important contribution on a number of fronts—to Zen studies, ritual studies, scholarship on women and religion, and the cross-cultural study of healing.

Buddhism and Christianity in Japan

Author : Notto R. Thelle
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824846907
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Buddhism and Christianity in Japan by : Notto R. Thelle

Download or read book Buddhism and Christianity in Japan written by Notto R. Thelle and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity in Japan is reaching new depths and insights and is being recognized today as a challenging and promising point of contact between two cultures. This volume is based on the premise that an understanding of the past is important for meaningful interaction in the present. By placing the Buddhist-Christian dialogue in historical perspective, the author provides an essential element for critical and creative reflection on today's dialogue. Thelle's historical examination begins with the arrival of Francis Xavier in 1549, which initiated the "Christian century." However, his main emphasis is on the nineteenth century, when relations between the two religions moved from confrontation to conciliation. The opening of Japan in 1854 initiated a confrontation that was more than a religious conflict; the meeting of the two faiths was part of an all-inclusive cultural clash. The confrontation of Buddhism and Christianity is interpreted in a broad cultural and sociopolitical context and reveals how strongly both religions were influenced by the social and ideological upheavals in nineteenth-century Japan. The vital issue was which religion would become the spiritual basis for the "new" Japan. Christianity, introduced as the spiritual backbone of Western power, was associated with ideas of modernization and democracy. Buddhism, regarded as part of the old culture, was in serious crisis. But the conflict was not resolved in victory and defeat. Radical changes took place within the two religions, and by the turn of the century confrontation had moved toward conciliation. The author examines the origins of emerging peaceful dialogue and uncovers the complex process by which it grew out of an atmosphere of animosity and distrust. Thelle's central themes are the connection between Christian expansion and Buddhist anti-Christian campaigns, religion and nationalism, Christian impact on Buddhist reform movements, attempts at unifying the two faiths into a new religiosity, and the development of an indigenous Japanese theology. He throws light on cross-cultural interactions far beyond the specialized area of religion and theology. With its broad cultural and sociopolitical scope, this book will interest all students of Japanese history and culture.

Being Human in a Buddhist World

Author : Janet Gyatso
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231538324
Total Pages : 539 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Being Human in a Buddhist World by : Janet Gyatso

Download or read book Being Human in a Buddhist World written by Janet Gyatso and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-20 with total page 539 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critically exploring medical thought in a cultural milieu with no discernible influence from the European Enlightenment, Being Human in a Buddhist World reveals an otherwise unnoticed intersection of early modern sensibilities and religious values in traditional Tibetan medicine. It further studies the adaptation of Buddhist concepts and values to medical concerns and suggests important dimensions of Buddhism's role in the development of Asian and global civilization. Through its unique focus and sophisticated reading of source materials, Being Human adds a crucial chapter in the larger historiography of science and religion. The book opens with the bold achievements in Tibetan medical illustration, commentary, and institution building during the period of the Fifth Dalai Lama and his regent, Desi Sangye Gyatso, then looks back to the work of earlier thinkers, tracing a strategically astute dialectic between scriptural and empirical authority on questions of history and the nature of human anatomy. It follows key differences between medicine and Buddhism in attitudes toward gender and sex and the moral character of the physician, who had to serve both the patient's and the practitioner's well-being. Being Human in a Buddhist World ultimately finds that Tibetan medical scholars absorbed ethical and epistemological categories from Buddhism yet shied away from ideal systems and absolutes, instead embracing the imperfectability of the human condition.